The Knowledge Management Connection   

A very short list to get you started. Note that Ranganathan's works are quite hard to get. Check your local university library.

Faceted classification

Several of the articles I've seen give differing interpretations of faceted classification (or use of facets within thesauri). The Topic Map standard (ISO/IEC 13250) -- and discussions of that standard -- also seems to use the term facet in a very different way. It is not clear whether the standards participants knew of Ranganathan's work.

• "Faceted Classifications and Thesauri," (http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/impact/f95/Papers-projects/Papers/perles.html).
• Foskett, A.C., The Subject Approach to Information. Fourth edition, 1982. Linnet Books, The Shoe String Press Inc., Hamden, Connecticut. ISBN 0-208-01970-7 (paperback).

Comment: By far the best source of background information I have encountered on faceted classification  and general issues of classification by subject. Out of print and very hard to find. I bought one of the few available used copies on Amazon.com.

• Maple, Amanda, "Faceted access: A review of the literature." (http://theme.music.indiana.edu/tech_s/mla/facacc.rev) This review discusses a structured view of subject classification, very much in the spirit of the Structured Communication Model. Although it is focused on the library science viewpoint, it addresses such concepts as the direct connection between "compound subject headings" and instances (in documents).

• Peter Merholz's topical discussion on faceted classification: http://peterme.com/archives/00000063.html#19. Contains the following links from one of the participants.
  • http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/OntologyExchange.html
  • http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/stevens01building.html
  • http://www.semanticweb.org/
  • http://smi-web.stanford.edu/pubs/SMI_Abstracts/SMI-2001-0872.html
  • http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/Papers/OntologyPapers.html
  • http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/Ontology/Papers/DKE-2001.pdf

  Comment: Not evaluated. Some of these sources may be heavily technical.

• The following resources on classification were identified by Samantha Bailey. Unfortunately, as she noted when she sent this to me,  they provide little background information about faceted knowledge organization.
  • http://www.sla.org/committee/catalog1/thesauri.html (Excellent resource!)
  • http://research.calacademy.org/taf/proceedings/milsteadtaf.html (Jessica Milstead is a distinguished indexer.)
  • http://www.montague.com/
• Prieto-Diaz' work on faceted classification and software reusability.
• Learn more about the Faceted Classification Discussion (FCD) mailing list at  http://poorbuthappy.com/fcd.

Additional resources -- general

• D.J. Foskett, "Libraries and information systems — a fruitful partnership," (http://www.ualberta.ca/dept/slis/cais/foskett.htm).

  Comment: A thoughtful look at classification and technology by a  distinguished expert in library science.

• Bohdan S. Wynar, Introduction to cataloging and classification, 8th. edition, Arlene G. Taylor, 1992, Libraries Unlimited, Inc., Englewood, Colorado. ISBN 0-87287-967-4 (paper)
• Database Vocabularies & Indexing (http://www.slais.ubc.ca/courses/arstlibr512/00-01-wt2/database1.htm).

  Comment: Lots of useful articles.

• Douglas Tudhope, Harith Alani and Christopher Jones, "Augmenting Thesaurus Relationships: Possibilities for Retrieval" (http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v01/i08/Tudhope/) , in the Journal of Digital Information, Volume I, Issue 8)

  Comment: This is an excellent paper, for many reasons, including (1) the paper provides graphic illustrations of relations (some showing metadata for links/associative connections) and (2) it directly addresses the question, "Is an extended core set of associative relationships possible?"

• The DMOZ directory:

  Reference: Knowledge Management: Knowledge Retrieval: Classification

• Bella Haas Weinberg, "Complexity In Indexing Systems -- Abandonment And Failure: Implications For Organizing The Internet" (http://www.asis.org/annual-96/ElectronicProceedings/weinberg.html)

Applicable standards -- knowledge organization

• ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Map standard. But note that the focus is the Web itself, in many cases.

  See http://xml.coverpages.org/topicMaps.html  and http://www.topicmaps.org for links to resources.

• "Construction of Monolingual Thesauri" -- ANSI Standard  Z39.19.

Search tools

• For general information about search and retrieval tools, try Avi Rappoport's SearchTools.com http://www.searchtools.com